the new New Psychedelia

carl's nightmare -- the return of Neutral Milk Hotel

article is headlined "the new psychedelia", but turns out to be an old psychedelic revival that has semi-reactivated and that also enjoys a "legacy" *

so it is a re-revival, whose original was itself the umpteenth reiteration of psychedelia (there were about six differently angled takes on it in the eighties alone)

i mean, i like psychedelia... the tame impala record is superb (my brother described it as like if someone had just concluded that "paperback writer" was it, and decided to stay there forever.. and if you factored in the b-side, "rain" into the equation, that's a pretty accurate description of their last record)... i had a breakthrough with dungen a few years ago when i just thought if this had actually been made it in 1970 and i'd stumbled on it as second-hand vinyl i'd love love love it, so... what's the problem, then?*... and i'm actually off to see some contemporary underground neo-neo-psych on saturday, a hillside open-air gig with high wolf and other not not fun acts playing

but... nonetheless... there is something fundamentally troubling about these eternal returns, isn't there?

* as for E6, a few years ago went to see the reunited Olivia Tremor Control at Bowery Ballroom with a younger friend who was massively affected by all that lot back in their original heyday, and they had been the one group from all that i'd tried to get into, they read good in their interviews... and there was a certainly an atmosphere of great good will at this reunion gig, especially when an unexpected Jeff Mangum sloped onstage - the 90s american indiekid version of when Strummer came onstage at a Big Audio Dynamite gig in 1986 -- but i have to say, musically, i kept thinking of... The Turtles.... my memory is hazy but i think OTC actually had someone onstage playing a tuba at one point...